Before the sun truly rose the sky turned light enough for the pair of them to see. Hugging the cliff, staying as much as possible under the overhanging lip, they searched for other caves and fissures, found many, but none that seemed to lead in deep. They went back to their night’s refuge and sat discussing plans while they ate the last of the flatbread they’d brought from Haen Marn. They had plenty of smoked meat left from a deer killed early on, but smoked meat alone grows wearisome after a while.
“Well,” Enj said. “If this beast doesn’t eat us, and if you don’t tame it, then it’s a slow and hungry walk we’re going to have back to Haen Marn.”
“Truly. Ye gods, I hope your mother fares well. I know you’ve both told me about Haen Marn’s dweomer and such-like, but this Alshandra creature can pop out of nowhere like one of the Wildfolk. What if Angmar doesn’t have time to work whatever spell this is?”
“Not a spell. Haen Marn goes where the danger be not, that’s all.”
Enj spoke so calmly, so sincerely, that Rhodry felt his worry ease. Soon, perhaps, he would see Haen Marn safe for himself, anyway, if he could tame this dragon.
“Let’s be out and searching, shall we?” Rhodry said. “The more we linger, the better chance it has to realize we’re here.”
But though they went back and forth along the cliff for hours, they never found a crack or cave more than twenty feet or so deep. They risked walking back a ways, into the open caldera, to study the rock face. Quite clearly in the bright sun they could see the dragon’s entrance, a squat half round of cave running back from a tiny slant of ledge. Leading up to it, in fact, ran a number of fissures and breaks.
“Practically a ladder,” Enj said. “I wonder if the beast did scrape all that out, with its claws, like, searching for a way in?”
“That would explain our luck, right enough.”
“Luck? Our luck? Rori, what are you suggesting?”
“Look, we could scrabble round here like moles for days, then find some tunnel and crawl for days more only to fetch up at some dead end. We don’t have one of Lin Serr’s miners with us, do we?”
“Well, true spoken.” Enj looked doubtfully up at the cave for a long time. “Ah, ye gods, naught ventured, naught gained! Let’s go get candles and suchlike from our packs, and the ropes, and then up we go.”
“I’ll go first. If it’s waiting inside, it can have a quick bite on me and give you time to get away.”
“Get away? From a dragon so close at hand? A fine man with a jest, bain’t you?”
They both laughed, but quietly, lest they warn their prey.
Although the first thirty feet or so were slick and thus delicate climbing, once they got well above the caldera floor they found plenty of holds. Every now and then they found a long scratch graved right into the rock, as if an enormous cat had run its claws down leather. Apparently the dragon had searched for a while before clearing its entrance. Where the fissure narrowed, they could brace themselves and rest, but neither ever spoke except for the occasional whispered warning about some loose rock or suchlike. Even with the warnings, occasionally scree fell in a shower of dust and noise. Rhodry found himself wincing every time, but they never heard an answering clatter from within.
Finally, just when the sun had climbed to noon up the greater cliff of the sky, they reached the ledge, which overhung the face itself. By inching sideways and risking a fall, Rhodry managed to flop himself onto it belly first and scrabble forward to security, but the noise was horrendous, at least to his ears. He got to his knees and glanced into the cave. Mercifully it stretched a long way back into darkness, an entrance only, not a home. With a gasp of relief rather than a sigh, he helped Enj gain the ledge as well.
“Not eaten yet,” Enj said, a little too cheerfully. “I say we save the candles for a bit.”
“Good idea. Both of us can see in the dark.”
They stepped into the cave, letting their eyes adjust.From the entrance light filtered in, revealing two tunnels that led deeper, but only one was wide enough for a dragon to pass through. It was possible, of course, that the narrow tunnel wound round to join the wider at some safer place, but Rhodry and Enj looked at each other, shrugged, and took the broad. Its floor was swept clean of loose rock and debris, practically polished, in fact, by the dragon’s belly and tail. As they crept along, putting one quiet foot in front of the other, pausing often to listen, the light from behind them dimmed, and the smell rose in a chemical melange— the gagging reek of brimstone, certainly, but mixed with it was another scent, as acrid as sweat,
“The stink of wyrm,” Rhodry whispered.
Enj grinned and nodded.
As it sloped down the tunnel twisted, leaving the sunlight behind, yet it never grew completely dark to Rhodry’s half-elven sight. Here and there he saw streaks of some pale blue glow, veining in the rock walls. The usual dwarven fungus, he thought at first, then realized that since it had never been exposed to sunlight, it couldn’t be phosphorescent—dweomer, perhaps, placed by the dragon to light its way. He’d never heard of their being able to see in the dark, after all. If the beast would mark the way to its lair for all to see, then it must have been supremely confident of its safety. He began to hope that they might come upon it asleep, especially if it had indeed fed the day before.
The tunnel twisted down and in, farther and farther, for what Rhodry estimated as half a mile. The air grew hotter and hotter, stinking of brimstone. Rhodry felt as if the back of his throat were crusted with the stuff, making him want to retch. Far ahead he could just see a different sort of light, pale red like the glow from hot iron on a blacksmith’s anvil. He signaled for a rest, and they passed the waterskin back and forth. Though he said nothing, Enj was grinning like a berserker.
As it sloped toward the reddish glow the tunnel narrowed, until its sides and roof turned polished, too, as if the dragon forced a tight way through every time it laired. They walked slower and slower, placing each foot carefully on this slick surface. The glow brightened to a hundred lanterns. Rhodry could smell hot water, the steamy reek of mineral springs and simmering brimstone. Ahead the tunnel mouth gaped. He glanced back at Enj, grinned, and led the way out onto a ledge, perched on the wall of an enormous cavern, formed aeons past, curved like the inside of a bubble, strangely smooth and dead-black, though fissured here and there by huge cracks.
Rhodry realized that they stood halfway up the southern wall and looked across some hundred yards and down some fifty feet. The whole cavern stank of wyrm, and of steam and minerals—the walls dripped and oozed with condensation. Looking down to the misty floor he wondered if this fire mountain was as dead as the dragon seemed to think, because it lay pitted and pooled with springs of sulfurous smelling water, oozing out of rust and yellowish mud, sending out long tendrils of steam to the irregular roof, where in places light shone through in slits. Down to his left, the cavern continued into shadows so dark that he couldn’t estimate how far it stretched, although he could see how the floor fell sharply away. Down its slope stood dim shapes of what might be spires of rock and other tunnel mouths.
To his right, half-shrouded by steaming mists the great wyrm lay coiled upon a wide ledge that overhung the hot springs themselves. In the faint light from the cracks in the cavern ceiling, it glittered all black and greeny-black, the great head, resting on one clawed paw, more of a copper verdure, the long body and folded wings tending toward jet.
“Warm in here,” Enj whispered. “It’ll be awake.”
The head snapped up, the eyes opened wide, the color of polished copper and gleaming as they searched out the source of the voice. One wing unfurled with a dry rustle and swept out—and out and out, a vast expanse of green-black skin and delicate bone that roofed half the cavern beneath. Rhodry could only wonder at himself, that he felt no fear, only an awe at how beautiful she was. He was certain—he’d never been so certain of anything in his life—that the dragon was female.
“Get back,” Rhodry said. “Leave h
er to me.”
As Enj scrambled into the tunnel, the massive head swung Rhodry’s way, and slowly, with a sound like wind in a thousand trees, the wing furled again.
“Leave her, you say? You have sharp eyes, elf.” The voice was more a hiss than a roar, but it boomed and echoed through the cavern in a winter flood of Elvish words. Rhodry stepped forward onto the ledge. As he faced her, not twenty feet away, he felt himself laughing, his low berserker’s chortle half under his breath. The huge mouth opened to reveal a hedge of crooked fangs like swords.
“You laugh at your dying?” She yawned, extending a long, long pink tongue, then curling it back like a cat. “Very good. I like courage in a male.”
“Do you, my lady? Because noble you are, truly, as noble and grand as a thousand queens.” He made her a low bow, as courtly as he could manage. “And my lady as well, because I’m sure as I can be that my death’s riding on your wings, and always have I served the lady called Death.”
“Is that why you’re here, elf? To die? If the woman you loved left you disconsolate or some such thing, it would have been easier to fall on your sword.” She paused, the eyes flashing copper sparks. “Look round you! There’s no treasure hoard here. I’ve nothing to steal, no gold, no jewels, none of those things your stupid stories tell about.” “Why do you think me one of the People?” “Who else would you be? You smell elven, you’re too large for a dwarf, and not hairy enough for a man of the Meradan.”
“Half an elf I am, my lady, but only half. My mother was of the race of men. Do you know us?”
With a snarl that stabbed his ears she raised herself up on her forelegs, and at that moment Rhodry saw his death in her eyes. If the fate of literally thousands of souls hadn’t rested upon him, he would have welcomed it from such a terrible beauty, but as it was, with a sigh of sincere regret, he flung up his hand and let the silver ring catch the light and flash.
“Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz!” He intoned her name in a wave of sound that pierced her rage like a spear, that resounded over her like a net. “Arzosah! I call you and command you!”
It seemed that he had cried a dweomer spell that melded her with the rock and turned her to a vein of copper—so still did she become. For a long, long moment she crouched unmoving, unbreathing like a dead thing; then with a rushy moan she slumped, her head flopping onto her paws, the enormous eyes rolling under drooped lids.
“I have hated your race for thousands of years, Man!” She spat the name out like an insult. “When you conquered wyrmkind, we fled you, we flew from you, we left our forests and our crags to you, and now you’ve followed us here. What will you take from me this time, Man? My very life?”
Rhodry was too stunned to answer. She lay deathly still, her eyes fixed on his face like a dog watching a cruel master uncurl a whip, and he hated himself for bringing her so low.
“Without your help those I’ve sworn to serve will die, or I’d turn and walk out of here right now.”
“I can tell when someone lies to me, and you speak the truth.” Yet still she did not move. “What do you want from me, Man?”
“When have my people harmed you? I’ve never met anyone who so much as knew that you existed.”
She raised her head and tilted it a little to one side to study him. He felt like laughing aloud just to see the life come back into her eyes.
“You’re speaking the truth again. This is very odd, Man. Or no, I won’t call you by that hateful name. Shall I call you Elf, or will you give me some harmless word to use?”
“My name is Rhodry.”
Her eyes seemed to bore into his and through his very soul.
“So it is,” she whispered. “So it is. Why would you tell me such a thing?”
“The names of elves have no power to bind them.”
For a moment he thought she was growling in a deep rumble under her breath; then he realized that she was laughing.
“Well, so they don’t. Very well, Rhodry. If I am to be enslaved, best it be by an elf like you. What do you want from me, Rhodry Dragonmaster?”
“Far to the south of here the Horsekin, the Meradan as you call them, are besieging a city, and they want to kill every soul in it. I intend to stop them.”
The rumble of her laughter shook the ledge.
“If I am to be enslaved, best it be for a task like that.” She swung her head to stare over his shoulder with one gleaming eye. “That creature behind you? Is it your servant, or may I eat it?”
He glanced round to see Enj standing just at the tunnel’s mouth with his arms clasped round his chest, staring at the dragon as wide-eyed as any worshiper seeing the statue of his god.
“Leave him be. He’s my friend.”
“Stranger yet. Half an elf, half a man, and friend to dwarves. At least you seem to be an interesting sort.”
“My lady, I can promise you this: Many a woman has loved me, a few have hated me, but none have ever called me dull.”
Again she laughed, the boom rolling and echoing round the cavern till Rhodry felt a lash of fear, running ice-cold down his spine. He knew that he needed to reassert his control of her.
“Tell me one thing,” he said. “And then we’ll return to the sunlight. Why do you hate the Meradan?”
She curled a vast paw and studied her talons, each as long as a broadsword.
“Now this telling is an order I’ll take gladly. Many, many years ago now, it was, but still it burns in my heart, I had a mate who pleased me. The hairy ones hunted him down like a beast and slew him, all to swell their king’s vanity. King! If you can call an animal on horseback a king! I slew many of them as they gloated over my mate’s dead body, I slew the king himself, chasing him away from the corpse through the grass. Oh, how he squealed and whined and pissed himself when I had him in my claws! King! I pierced him through his stomach and ripped out his guts, then let him die slowly, whining and screeching to the end. But naught would bring back my dead mate. Always have I longed for further revenge, and if you offer it to me, Dragonmaster, then I will serve you well. Why, I’ll serve you freely. You don’t even need that ring, truly you don’t.”
Rhodry smiled.
“I think I’ll wear it a little longer, though, just for the habit of the thing.”
She glared and growled, but just softly under her breath.
“My friend and I are going out now. By your name, Arzosah, I command you to follow where I lead.”
“Ych, you’re a clever one! Follow I shall.”
As they walked back up through the tunnel, Rhodry could hear her, scrabbling and scraping behind, shoving her way through to the wider reaches, where she could pad along after, her feet slapping the rock. Enj seemed to have recovered himself, but even though he and Rhodry would look each other’s way every now and then, neither of them could speak in the dark and dreamlike tunnel. Once they reached the open air and stepped out onto the ledge, Enj turned to him and grinned.
“We did it. Against all odds and hope, we did it.”
Rhodry laughed just as the dragon stuck her enormous head out in the sun, blinking furiously at the glare. In the sun she shone black, as smooth and fine as a piece of obsidian.
“Do you mock me?” she snarled.
“I don’t, no, but my own fears, that never would I find you and fulfill the geas laid upon me.”
“A geas?”
“Just so, laid upon me to find you by the greatest master of dweomer in the kingdom of Deverry.”
“Ah.” She considered this. “Well, then, that pleases me. If there’s dweomer at work, no doubt there was naught I could do to turn aside my Wyrd. Shall I carry you down to the valley floor?”
“You shall carry us safely to the valley floor.”
“Clever and twice clever. So be it.”
Never had Rhodry felt as solemn as he did then, not even when he’d been invested as gwerbret of Aberwyn up in the king’s palace of Dun Deverry, not even when the High King himself had taken his hand to bid him rise. He set one foot o
n her bowed neck and sat between her wings, clutching the rigid scale of a raised crest. With tears in his eyes Enj found a spot behind him.
“If only my father could see this,” Enj whispered. “If only he were here.”
Arzosah inched forward onto the ledge, then leapt,spreading her wings with a clack like an enormous fan. Wind rushed round them like a slap. Down they glided, circling the caldera once, then landing near the trees and the stream. Rhodry slid down and helped a white-faced Enj to solid ground. He was willing to guess that he looked more than a little pale himself.
“That wasn’t the most sanguine ride I’ve ever taken,” Rhodry said in Deverrian, then switched to Elvish. “Arzosah, we’ll have to rig up some sort of riding harness with ropes.”
“A rope? A rope round my belly as if I were some smelly mule? No! I shan’t allow it!”
Rhodry held up his hand and made the ring glitter. Her head drooped, and she rolled her eyes, hissing under her breath.
“Rhodry, please, spare me that, oh, please, Dragon-master?”
“I can’t or I would. I can see what an indignity it is, and I might risk my own death, but I won’t have Enj falling to his.”
“Oh, very well then. You’re a harsh man, though.”
“So I’ve always been told, and so I’ve always needed to be.”
By piecing together the rope they’d brought with them, they managed to make a primitive harness, one loop round her belly, just behind the wings, stabilized with another round her chest, rather like a crude martingale. Rhodry used the ring to reinforce his command that she fly as smoothly as possible.
“And where, pray tell, O master of mine, are we going? I can’t fly night and day, you know. I shall have to hunt for a deer now and then as well.”
“Fair enough, as long as you promise upon your name to come back when you’ve made your first kill. You can finish it where we camp.”
“So harsh!” She stamped a clawed foot. “Oh, very well then.”
“Good. We fly east first, to a place called Haen Marn. Do you know it?”
“No.”
Days of Blood and Fire Page 45